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Survivors detail North Korean labour camps

PETER CAVE: A South Korean broadcaster is reporting that intelligence agencies in Seoul and Beijing have information that the North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il is gravely sick with pancreatic cancer.

If true, that news will lift the spirits of thousands of North Koreans who've fled oppression and persecution and enforced labour in the secretive Stalinist state.

It's believed there are up to 200,000 North Koreans in labour camps.

Malnutrition, starvation, torture and murder are reported to be rife and few prisoners ever make it out to tell the world about the horrors of the gulag.

Our North Asia correspondent Mark Willacy has just returned from Seoul where he met some of those who've lived to tell their tale.

MARK WILLACY: Kim Yong's weathered face and many scars testify to a cruelty few could ever comprehend.

This quietly spoken man spent years in the living hell of North Korea's Camp 14, slaving as a prisoner for 16 hours a day in a coal mine deep in the earth.

KIM YONG (translated): We would dig through cow dung to find bits of corn or beans to survive.

Once, when there was an accident in the mine, one of the prisoners died. We were ordered to bury him, but before we did we cut some flesh from him to eat. We had no choice, we were starving.

MARK WILLACY: Kim Yong had once been a privileged member of the communist regime.

As a lieutenant-colonel in the North Korean National Security Agency, he was charged with earning foreign currency for Kim Jong-il.

But then, in 1993, intelligence agents discovered his family secret.

KIM YONG (translated): I'd been working for the party and the Dear Leader, and was so good at my job I was up for a promotion. But during the screening process for the promotion it was discovered that my real father and my elder brother had been publicly executed for spying for the Americans, so I was tortured and then thrown into Camp 14.

MARK WILLACY: As he watched more people starve and others die at the hands of the guards, Kim Yong decided he would try to escape.

Then one day a remarkable opportunity presented itself; he discovered a space at the bottom of a coal train car. He slipped inside and, hiding under the coal, he was transported out of the labour camp.

Making his way to China and then to Mongolia, he finally found freedom in South Korea but it has cost him his children, whom he hasn't seen since he was arrested 16 years ago.

(Piano music plays)

MARK WILLACY: Kim Cheol-ung is another who's escaped the dystopia of South Korea.

Like Kim Yong, he occupied a privileged position within North Korean society. As the lead pianist for the State Symphony Orchestra he'd even played for the Dear Leader Kim Jong-il.

But one day he played the wrong tune.

KIM CHEOL-UNG (translated): The first time I felt that certain music was banned in North Korea was when I played Richard Clayderman for my girlfriend. Someone heard me and reported me to the security authority for playing capitalist music. I had to write a 10-page self-criticism, and was warned next time I would end up in a prison camp.

MARK WILLACY: Kim Cheol-ung realised he could no longer live in a totalitarian state which used music as a tool of oppression and political control.

So he escaped across the Tumen River and into China. There he was helped by Christians who got him to South Korea.

KIM CHEOL-UNG (translated): I believe the day will come in North Korea when people can play music without it being an instrument of the regime. The people's desire for freedom cannot be denied forever.

(Piano music plays)

MARK WILLACY: While Kim Cheol-Ung and his music have flourished in the freedoms of South Korea, former political prisoner Kim Yong wants the world to help those still slaving and starving in the North Korean gulag.

KIM YONG (translated): Kim Jong-il's legend and grip on power has been strengthened because of South Korea's soft approach in giving him aid. I think US President Barack Obama should take more stern measures against Kim Jong-il, such as more economic sanctions. More pressure is needed if anyone else is to be freed from the labour camps.

(Piano music plays)

MARK WILLACY: This is Mark Willacy in Seoul for PM.

PETER CAVE: And Mark Willacy's full report can be seen tonight on the 7:30 Report.